Pathfinder: The Return of Quad Damage
Apr 10, 2024 10:11:18 GMT -5
Thunderkiss, Cdr. Crimmins, and 7 more like this
Post by Daniela1 on Apr 10, 2024 10:11:18 GMT -5
Hello everyone! Long time no see. Today's post is another breakdown of Pixonic's hilariously broken offering. Without further ado, let's dive in.
The robot itself
The robot by itself is just an average bot. It's got 3 medium slots, 250K HP at MK3, and a speed of 50 km/h. Not that impressive, Ravana's base stats are overall better. But of course no one really cares about robot base stats these days, it's all about the ability. And boy what an ability it has. Let's talk about the passive first.
Enfeeble
This passive basically does the exact same thing as the counter suppression provided by Seeker and also Newton's legendary pilot. It passively suppresses an enemy that attacks Pathfinder. One notable difference compared to other counter suppression abilities is that Pathfinder has two charges of Enfeeble, so theoretically it can suppress two enemies at once if they both attacked Pathfinder. Each charge has a cooldown of 12 seconds and the Suppression strength is 40%.
Track
This, like many other meta and previous meta robots, is the true special sauce that makes this robot broken. Upon activation, any robot within 600m, even those not within line of sight, will be immediately hit with Lockdown and Deathmark. The Deathmark lasts for 6 seconds and increases damage taken by 40%. Obviously this is intended to help kill an enemy, but what makes this ability truly insane is the bonuses it gives to yourself and any ally that manages to score an Assist or Kill against the Deathmarked target. It applies a 20% damage boost, a 10% speed boost, 15% repair, and a 7.5% gray HP repair. You can stack the damage and speed boosts by SIX times, and they last until your robot gets destroyed. Remember, both yourself and any ally that got an Assist or Kill against a marked target gets these bonuses. This ability basically turns Pathfinder into a walking Kestrel, on steroids, crack, and cocaine, after going to the gym and removes its own nerfs. All this with a cooldown of 12 seconds. Actually it's more like a 6 second cooldown considering the cooldown immediately starts after the button press and not when the Deathmark wears off.
You can stack those permanent bonuses six times, meaning you can get up to 120% damage increase just from this alone, and that's not even counting the 40% extra damage you get from the Deathmark or the myriad of other damage bonuses you can use simultaneously with this. Here's a simple calc.
Imagine a Pathfinder using a Pascal drone and has at least one Nuclear Amplifier. You can get this much damage boost.
Track Bonuses: 120% (requires 6 robots to be destroyed while being affected by Pathfinder's Deathmark)
Track Deathmark: 40% (lasts for 6 seconds)
Nuclear Amplifier: 76% (need stack)
Pascal: 42% (needs 5 kills or assists)
That rounds up to a bonkers 278% damage boost. Now all you need is a freezing weapon and a simple master gunsmith skill to reach over 300% damage. Conveniently, Path is sold together with the new freezing homing rockets. By this point, you're dealing QUAD damage. And unlike the previous time you can get quad damage by stacking multiple effect immunities together which seems to be mostly an unintended oversight, you can do this quad damage thing legitimately as long as you have the right equipment. Very nice Pixonic, what a balanced robot you just made here, totally not overpowered at all.
Oh and also the legendary pilot for this thing disables your target shields for 3 seconds when you press the ability button. This is not to be confused with Shieldbreaker, it's the same effect as what the Thor mothership applies, meaning your teammates can also ignore the enem'y shields.
So how do you play this thing?
Pathfinder relies on its ability to empower its allies and itself with its bonuses. A simple way to exploit this is just to immediately use your ability on a robot your teammate is about to kill, giving the bonuses both to your teammate and yourself. You can also just apply the deathmark and kill the enemy yourself, but only you will get the bonuses unless any nearby teammate gets an assist. As for brawling, Pathfinder can't last for a long time, you have to rely on Enfeeble to survive since your base HP is rather low, but with the insane amount of damage you can do and combined with proper brawling weapons, that 5 second Suppression duration is more than enough to kill an enemy while taking minimal damage. You can also use other defense methods such as Mute or attack together with an ally meat shield that hopefully would also get the bonuses by killing the enemy you just marked. For mid and long range encounters, Pathfinder is incredibly powerful thanks to its damage boosts and the instant 600m Lockdown it can give to an enemy, it works terrific on solo and even more so in squad play. For example you can have a tank teammate defending center beacon while your Pathfinder supports it by using your ability. One of Pathfinder's weak points is its inability to defend a beacon for extended periods of time against multiple tanks and also capturing beacons by itself. You'll need ally support for that.
Counterplay?
Pathfinder's main defense is Enfeeble, which only applies Suppression after it got hit by an attack. This means that Pathfinder's Enfeeble cannot reduce the damage of the first attack it takes. And thus, powerful single shot builds such as a Gauss Crisis can be used to significantly damage a Pathfinder without worrying about its passive ability. Another solution is just to use anti suppression items, such as Anti Control or specific legendary pilots like Misaki. Orbital Strikes also aren't affected by Suppression.
When encountering a Pathfinder, you should always prioritize destroying it first before any other enemy to prevent it from empowering itself and its allies. It's base HP is rather unimpressive, so if you can get around Enfeeble you can eliminate it quick.
And that's all for today's overview. If I find any other interesting info I'll update the post here.
The robot itself
The robot by itself is just an average bot. It's got 3 medium slots, 250K HP at MK3, and a speed of 50 km/h. Not that impressive, Ravana's base stats are overall better. But of course no one really cares about robot base stats these days, it's all about the ability. And boy what an ability it has. Let's talk about the passive first.
Enfeeble
This passive basically does the exact same thing as the counter suppression provided by Seeker and also Newton's legendary pilot. It passively suppresses an enemy that attacks Pathfinder. One notable difference compared to other counter suppression abilities is that Pathfinder has two charges of Enfeeble, so theoretically it can suppress two enemies at once if they both attacked Pathfinder. Each charge has a cooldown of 12 seconds and the Suppression strength is 40%.
Track
This, like many other meta and previous meta robots, is the true special sauce that makes this robot broken. Upon activation, any robot within 600m, even those not within line of sight, will be immediately hit with Lockdown and Deathmark. The Deathmark lasts for 6 seconds and increases damage taken by 40%. Obviously this is intended to help kill an enemy, but what makes this ability truly insane is the bonuses it gives to yourself and any ally that manages to score an Assist or Kill against the Deathmarked target. It applies a 20% damage boost, a 10% speed boost, 15% repair, and a 7.5% gray HP repair. You can stack the damage and speed boosts by SIX times, and they last until your robot gets destroyed. Remember, both yourself and any ally that got an Assist or Kill against a marked target gets these bonuses. This ability basically turns Pathfinder into a walking Kestrel, on steroids, crack, and cocaine, after going to the gym and removes its own nerfs. All this with a cooldown of 12 seconds. Actually it's more like a 6 second cooldown considering the cooldown immediately starts after the button press and not when the Deathmark wears off.
You can stack those permanent bonuses six times, meaning you can get up to 120% damage increase just from this alone, and that's not even counting the 40% extra damage you get from the Deathmark or the myriad of other damage bonuses you can use simultaneously with this. Here's a simple calc.
Imagine a Pathfinder using a Pascal drone and has at least one Nuclear Amplifier. You can get this much damage boost.
Track Bonuses: 120% (requires 6 robots to be destroyed while being affected by Pathfinder's Deathmark)
Track Deathmark: 40% (lasts for 6 seconds)
Nuclear Amplifier: 76% (need stack)
Pascal: 42% (needs 5 kills or assists)
That rounds up to a bonkers 278% damage boost. Now all you need is a freezing weapon and a simple master gunsmith skill to reach over 300% damage. Conveniently, Path is sold together with the new freezing homing rockets. By this point, you're dealing QUAD damage. And unlike the previous time you can get quad damage by stacking multiple effect immunities together which seems to be mostly an unintended oversight, you can do this quad damage thing legitimately as long as you have the right equipment. Very nice Pixonic, what a balanced robot you just made here, totally not overpowered at all.
Oh and also the legendary pilot for this thing disables your target shields for 3 seconds when you press the ability button. This is not to be confused with Shieldbreaker, it's the same effect as what the Thor mothership applies, meaning your teammates can also ignore the enem'y shields.
So how do you play this thing?
Pathfinder relies on its ability to empower its allies and itself with its bonuses. A simple way to exploit this is just to immediately use your ability on a robot your teammate is about to kill, giving the bonuses both to your teammate and yourself. You can also just apply the deathmark and kill the enemy yourself, but only you will get the bonuses unless any nearby teammate gets an assist. As for brawling, Pathfinder can't last for a long time, you have to rely on Enfeeble to survive since your base HP is rather low, but with the insane amount of damage you can do and combined with proper brawling weapons, that 5 second Suppression duration is more than enough to kill an enemy while taking minimal damage. You can also use other defense methods such as Mute or attack together with an ally meat shield that hopefully would also get the bonuses by killing the enemy you just marked. For mid and long range encounters, Pathfinder is incredibly powerful thanks to its damage boosts and the instant 600m Lockdown it can give to an enemy, it works terrific on solo and even more so in squad play. For example you can have a tank teammate defending center beacon while your Pathfinder supports it by using your ability. One of Pathfinder's weak points is its inability to defend a beacon for extended periods of time against multiple tanks and also capturing beacons by itself. You'll need ally support for that.
Counterplay?
Pathfinder's main defense is Enfeeble, which only applies Suppression after it got hit by an attack. This means that Pathfinder's Enfeeble cannot reduce the damage of the first attack it takes. And thus, powerful single shot builds such as a Gauss Crisis can be used to significantly damage a Pathfinder without worrying about its passive ability. Another solution is just to use anti suppression items, such as Anti Control or specific legendary pilots like Misaki. Orbital Strikes also aren't affected by Suppression.
When encountering a Pathfinder, you should always prioritize destroying it first before any other enemy to prevent it from empowering itself and its allies. It's base HP is rather unimpressive, so if you can get around Enfeeble you can eliminate it quick.
And that's all for today's overview. If I find any other interesting info I'll update the post here.
